You've Been Expecting This
by Ghanaperu
Summary: "You've been expecting this from the very beginning, but that doesn't mean it hurts any less." Tag to Humbug and is mostly about Callen and Joelle. Chapter two - "Callen is not a man given to emotion...". Spoilers for his childhood, at least, what we know of it.
1. Chapter 1

You've been expecting this since the beginning, but that doesn't mean it hurts any less. After all, haven't you lived this story out before? Over and over again you have walked down this same road and even though you try and make different choices it always ends at the same place. Here.

You think back over this history, wonder where you went wrong this time. What moment was it when you sealed your fate, stepped that first step down the road of separation? Was it the first time you touched her? The day she asked you about family and you mentioned Sam and Deeks and Kensi and Hetty - not Romania or foster care at all? Was it the very first time you met? Because really, this has been a lie since the very beginning. But no matter how long or hard you think, it always comes down to the same choice you have made over and over again - loyalty versus happiness; and loyalty always wins. You are an agent first, before you are anything else - and even though she doesn't know that you can't forget it.

So then today comes and you have to decide, and even though you postpone as long as you can, when the time comes to choose between her harm and her anger, you choose anger. You take the loss just like you always have before and even as you save her life you are rebuilding the walls in your heart.

Deeks looks into your eyes at the wrap-up of the case and you hate the pity just as much as you are grateful for it. And she is as angry as you expected her to be and when she walks away you accept the rejection easily because it is familiar. You settle back into an old skin as you exit this relationship through her front door, and your memory rewinds, lightning fast, all the way back to the very beginning of today, when Sam looked at her picture on the OPS screen and squeezed your shoulder in the anticipation of the loss. You don't look back as you close the door.

Except this old skin doesn't fit as well as it used to, and Christmas is too close and _she_ was too close for you to give up that easily. It is hard, hard and risky and so exceptionally vulnerable for you, but you call her and when she doesn't answer you leave a voice message. Sam tells you to leave it at that (because we all know it's Sam who advises you on relationships and not the other way around, no matter how much you bluster) and you listen to him.

Skating starts, and Deeks and Kensi are kissing across the rink, pretending like they don't know everyone is watching. Sam and his family are happily debating, bantering like they love each other. And you? You're skating alone, but you're happy anyway because these people are the family you didn't get the chance to grow up with but they're here now and for this moment that is enough.

Until you see her. She is sitting on the bench watching you, and your heart thumps in your chest while you execute an about-turn and come to lean on the edge of the rink in front of her. Your bandaged hand rests on the edge, and she looks at it for a split second but you don't notice because you're humble like that.

The conversation begins with obvious facts restated and an awkward tiptoeing around the words that can't be said, while trying to regain that [thing] you had before. She changes the subject. "Are they your family?" she asks innocently, and you hesitate in honor of your childhood but the truth spills out easily enough. "Yes." You invite her to meet them, and she can't know how big of a gift that is; but it doesn't matter because she is interested in more than that. "I have to meet _you_ first," she says; and if you stop breathing for a moment at that forgiveness nobody really notices.

So you slide easily down onto your elbows and the reconciliation between you two is beautiful. You grin and she smiles; and the sadness you didn't think would matter this much melts slowly onto the ice under your feet, and the anger she didn't know would hurt this much leaks gently out and dissolves into the wind. This is what it means to love, Callen. This is what it means.


	2. Chapter 2

Callen is not a man given to tears, or to emotional declarations or anything of the sort. He is an agent, through and through – strong in mind and body and soul - and he knows enough to keep his secrets close. He knows the danger of trust, of opening yourself to anyone at all because everyone is thinking of themselves first and in this world that he lives in it is often the people on the ground who are trampled over. So he keeps his secrets close and his emotion is tightly locked away in a little box that sits on his fireplace. No one has ever seen that box, not even Sam. Sam knows what is in there, but not because Callen ever said – Sam just knows because he is Sam. At least, that is Callen's explanation for it. Hetty is Hetty and Sam is Sam and they need no other explanation.

So Callen is not a man given to tears, but on some rare nights his house is empty enough and dark enough and lonely enough that he cries. Not loud, sobbing tears – but the kind that spill gently over in sad release. He cries for the people he couldn't save and the family he never knew and the people he's lost along the way. And one night, one night after he has spent an entire week being just ten minutes too late or ten minutes too early, and the bad guys have escaped and the good guys have died and even Deeks has taken to fierce silence during stakeouts – he goes home and writes two words, that spill over and run out in dark ink across the paper until he has filled a whole page.

_I cried. Doesn't every child cry? I was a little boy stranded in an unforgiving world, and I didn't know my parents or my sister or my name or my history or anything. I was just a lonely child with nothing. But I gathered together the pain and the tears and I soldered them to my childish courage and I vowed to become something more – to force myself upon this angry world until I was not afraid anymore. And I did. _

_I moved through home after home but loved no one and by the time I turned eighteen I was not afraid. So I took up a gun in my hands and learned that protection of others is important but comes second to keeping our own secrets, and it felt like a familiar lesson; familiar enough that I slipped into story after story and lived a dozen different lives and believed my own lies in a way few others could. I was damn good at it._

_I cry. Doesn't every man cry? But I am not a man like every other man, because I cause death as often as I grieve for it, and I run towards the evil things in the darkness while forcing everyone else to run away. I stand alone against an angry world, holding tight the lessons I learned as a boy and the courage I have discovered within myself._

_Except, I am not so alone now and lately I have been learning how to add genuine care to my strength, learning how to be afraid properly. The world cannot conquer me anymore, because I have stood against it a thousand times and won on my own merit, screaming to the storms in defiance for the little boy who was too scared to live. The world cannot conquer me anymore and so it is time to set that quest aside, and I think this partner here with me now will teach me how to do that. If I can only let myself learn, he will teach me how to love._

He writes the words for the little boy inside him who needs to hear them, and it is only after he has finished that he notices the page is splotted with tear marks. It feels fitting, so he folds it up into a neat square and puts it in his little box of emotion on the fireplace mantel, and lays down on his bedroll to sleep. He dreams that night of Joelle, of her standing at the edge of the ice rink looking at him with something other than anger in her eyes, and forgiving him with her words - and his heart throbs loudly in his chest because he doesn't know what to do with it. But it is just a dream, so he remembers that he is learning to love others and Sam's advice runs through his head and he musters up his courage and speaks. He speaks as Callen and not anyone else - Callen who is an orphan and an agent and strong and weak and confident and insecure…he tells her that he doesn't have a name and it is a small truth but it is a truth nonetheless so it feels like a step in the right direction.

He wakes up at three in the morning to a call from Hetty letting him know that Kensi and Deeks have seen movement on their stakeout. He wipes the sleep and the dreams from his eyes and his mind and drives away with Sam – and today they get there in time. The bad guys are caught and nobody dies and all that is left to do is the paperwork, so he tells his teammates that drinks are on him; they go out together that night and Deeks is the loudest person in the whole bar and it feels right.


End file.
